Tag Archives: Squirrel Cove

The SMURFETTE reached Squirrel Cove about 1 PM on Wednesday, August 21. According to a crew member, it is one of the catamarans battling it out for the lead. The last of the small boats arrived over the course of the next three hours. They are mid-way in the 2019 Barefoot Raid around Cortes Island.

His first memory of Cortes Island is of the Ellingsen family moving their log float home to Von Donop Inlet in 1945. His stories go back decades further. Mike Manson, whose name is preserved in Mansons Landing, was his maternal great grandfather. What was life like in the 1940s and 50s? In this morning’s program we start a series in which Andy Ellingsen remembers Cortes Island past.

In the summer of 2016, a subsidiary of one of the world’s leading aggregate companies announced it was about to commence exploratory surface drilling in the Lloyd Creek Area of Desolation Sound. This is in close proximity to the region’s foremost kayak and boating area and, consequently, brings a substantial income to local businesses. Had the venture gone forward, one of the regions few remaining old growth forests would have been cut down, an important fish bearing creek would have been devastated and a number of important indigenous sites would have been threatened. Lehigh Hanson Materials abandoned its application, but local author Judith Williams talks about a new threat to Desolation Sound.

Its almost 550 km from Squirrel Cove, on Cortes Island, to Puyallup, Washington by car, but centuries by canoe. In 1884 the Canadian Government joined in a conspiracy to destroy the canoe traffic that had been plying coastal waters, from Alaska to California, since the beginnings of oral tradition. First Nations people were restricted to their reserves and had had to obtain permission to leave. The reawakening started almost 30 years ago, in what has since become an annual event.A different nation hosts the gathering every year and this summer the gathering is at Puyallup. The Klahoose canoe Tl’emtl’ems left Squirrel Cove at 10 AM this morning.